Ottoman legacy in the near east and the balkans
It has been a daunting task to cover the sweep of the Ottoman Empire a period of 700 years from the early 14th century to the early 20th century, as well as the 300 years before the Turks actually enter into the Middle East, and it’s even more daunting to understand what all of these achievements in this history means as a legacy to us today, and particularly to the peoples of the Middle East. It’s something of a platitude to say that the Middle East is very much defined by its immediate Ottoman past, but what do we mean by that, how much is owed to the Ottoman Empire.
In part is still too early to tell, because these influences will reverberate through the generations to come. But there are a couple of points that we can make about the Ottoman legacy and the Ottoman achievement. For one, the final stages of the Ottoman Empire, its breakup and destruction in the First World War, the excesses that were committed to defend the empire that is only a small part of the legacy although it’s one that is painfully remembered today.
These include the massacres of populations, the ethnic cleansing, the extreme nationalism on all sides, and one can see in these events, the precedents for similar such acts such actions in the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly in all of the successor states, whether it be the violence that broke out in the Balkans in the 1990s or issues of sectarian violence in Egypt, or issues of who should control the regions of Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, all of these issues to some extent, are laid at the foot of the Ottoman Sultans.
But in fairness, the Ottomans Shelton’s had promoted a very successful Empire for at least 500 years from that myth the second based on the system of the millet, the millet had complicated the diversity of religious and ethnic communities, but it had not created it.
All of these communities were able to live side by side, at least until the 19th century, with reasonable tolerance to each other, and even at times some understanding. And that broke down under the impact of the threat of the West, the emergence of nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire, the redefinition of the Ottoman identity into a Turkish identity, and it is only a small part of the overall story of the Ottoman State, and it’s also a part of the story of how the Ottoman State confronted outside threats and the issue of modernity
